This morning I attended a children's Mass with a very large school. During the recessional, I was startled by the words of the song. The children have been brainwashed to want world peace more than the Kingdom of God. Think of this. The new world order has become more important than this kingdom of God-this phrase-world peace- is more important than these words of Christ:I am come to cast fire on the earth; and what will I, but that it be kindled? DR Luke 12:49 Christ did not come for peace, folks, but for the establishment of the Church. The peace of God does surpass all understanding, but this means that one must join into the Church Militant. The peace comes with humility and grace, and is not an "outside" peace, but an inside peace.I believe that this generation of children in Catholic schools, Anglican schools, and other religious schools have been taught to want world peace, and not to work for the Kingdom of God.The only world peace which will come will come through only two means.The first is through a false world government which would overcome all nations. The second is through the real Kingdom of God, the peace which comes to those who trust in God first, and who carry on the Truth of the Catholic Church.Think on this, folks. Your children and your grandchildren have been prepared to turn against the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church. This will happen if you do not teach them otherwise.

And, it is obvious, that although she refused to enter the Catholic Church and instead, remained in the Jewish fold, she knew God as few do.

Here is one quotation from her and a link from the past.“Love of God is pure when joy and suffering inspire an equal degree of gratitude.” Gravity and GraceOnly one who loves can write this. Only one who has met God in suffering and come to see the love in purgation can say this. Gratitude comes from a humble heart. I love this pure and profoundly simple philosopher. May God bless her and may His Face shine upon her.

Monday, 24 June 2013

Waiting for God and Waiting on God vs. the Self-Hug of Indulgence: Weil and Jones

I also attended, over thirty years ago, a superb conference on her at Notre Dame. I had already read her books but the conference presenters were top-drawer. Sadly, it was not well attended.

Already, the need to listen to spirituality of love and suffering was becoming too tedious for most young people.

Suffering is part of the journey to God and cannot and should not be avoided. Weil has a few points I would like to highlight today.

The first is that she says that Christianity is the religion of slaves. What she means is that only those who are humbled in this world can appreciate this religion. She couples this with the extreme poverty of St. Francis. Her desire to be a vagabond was born of the ideal of purity, separating herself out from the world, and being totally dependent on God.

A slave is totally dependent on his or her master. Louis de Montfort uses this imagery in his consecration to Mary. We are repealed by the idea of slavery, as we identify ourselves as sons and daughters of God.

However, those of us who have had the good fortune of being in love understand the ideal of waiting on a person's every need or desire. Indeed, in the Scriptures, we have this phrase from Psalm 132:2 DR:

Behold as the eyes of the servants are on the hands of their masters, As the eyes of the handmaid are on the hands of her mistress: so are our eyes unto the Lord our God, until he have mercy on us.

The second idea I want to note is that Weil experienced a personal love relationship with God, which even in the midst of great suffering, sustained her. The mystery of His Presence was given to her, and she notes that His Presence of Love was there even in suffering. I understand this. One can be suffering intensely and know all the time that Christ is with one. This Presence is Love, but He is not the Comforter at this point.

The third point is key. Weil notes that Christ wants us to prefer Truth to Him. What she means it that if we seek Truth, and Christ is Truth, we shall find Him. But, if we stray from Truth, we lose Him.

Those who seek consolations are not seeking Truth. These people kid themselves that they are seeking God, but in reality, they are seeking only themselves, in a self-hug of indulgence.

Another point to highlight for today, and I shall come back to her another day, is that one can meditate and contemplate using the Our Father alone. For years, Weil contemplated the Our Father daily, and from that prayer came great graces for her. We do not have to be complicated in our prayers. Christ Himself gave us the Our Father, and in that prayer is all we need for Love to blossom.

I read Weil over and over as a young woman, and her love for and in Christ is ever new. The greatest sadness to me is that she could not bring herself to be baptized, although Christ met her again and again. She decided for the sake of her Jewish brothers and sisters, to stay outside in the vestibule of the Church.

One more last point is key. Weil states that God uses rejects, castaways, wastes. I can identify with that for many reasons. God shines forth most clearly in those who are low and lowly. But, the world does not see this. Neither do some Catholics, who are so bent on middle-class spirituality, that they miss God, who is waiting for them. They miss Him, as David Jones writes, "For it is easy to miss him, at the turn of a civilisation."

(If and when I eventually get to heaven, after seeing Christ, Mary and Bernard of Clairvaux, I want to see David Jones. I am sad I never met him, but he died in 1974, six years before I came to England.)

Thanks to Wiki for Photo

A, a, a, DOMINE DEUS

I said, Ah! what shall I write?I enquired up and down.(He’s tricked me beforewith his manifold lurking-places.)I looked for His symbol at the door.I have looked for a long whileat the textures and contours.I have run a hand over the trivial intersections.I have journeyed among the dead formscausation projects from pillar to pylon.I have tired the eyes of the mindregarding the colours and lights.I have felt for His woundsin nozzles and containers.I have wondered for the automatic devices.I have tested the inane patternswithout prejudice.I have been on my guardnot to condemn the unfamiliar.For it is easy to miss Himat the turn of a civilisation.

I have watched the wheels go round in case I might see theliving creatures like the appearance of lamps, in case I might seethe Living God projected from the Machine. I have said to theperfected steel, be my sister and for the glassy towers I thought Ifelt some beginnings of His creature, but A,a,a, Domine Deus,my hands found the glazed work unrefined and the terriblecrystal a stage-paste . . . Eia, Domine Deus.

Thursday, 22 March 2012

Thoughts on Simone Weil

Simone Weil is one of my favorite philosophers and being in France reminds me of her great contribution to the mystical theology which joined philosophy, political activism and mystic thought.

She is buried in Ashford, Kent and last year, I visited her grave with a friend of mine. Simone was only 34 for she died and her writing may appeal to young people. I read her over thirty years ago and I had the honor of attending a three day conference at the University of Notre Dame concerning her thought. Simone never became a Catholic, although she loved Christ and His saints, such as St. Francis. She said she wanted to sit on the steps of the great cathedral which was the Church, waiting outside with her people, the Jews. I think she may have had the Baptism of Desire.

What is significant is Simone, who came from a brilliant family, represents the end of a generation of mystical philosophers, so common on the Continent in the 19th and early 20th centuries. As philosophy became more and more modern, post-modern, etc., separation between prayer and philosophy, between religious experience and philosophy and theology and philosophy has been irrevocably broken. Her death and her small grave symbolize to me the end of the great tradition of philosophy being the handmaid of theology.

At the end, she had a disease or condition which made it difficult for her to eat. Her biographer said this of her, that as she identified with the sufferings of the Jews and others in the War, "As for her death, whatever explanation one may give of it will amount in the end to saying that she died of love."Sir Richard Lodowick Edward Montagu Rees,2nd Baronettranslated many of her works and wrote a biography of her. May her spirit of compassion and real thought be passed down to other youths who may want to restore philosophy to its rightful place in the Church and in the world.

No matter how little you love God, He still loves you; loves you so much that He showers all this grief and pain on you, making your punishment in this world so great that it may perhaps suffice to amend you, and make unnecessary the dread punishments of the next. These others you may be spared!

Your past and present torments and sufferings are poured down upon you to test your faith and steel it; they also work to curb your lusts and passions. Humble yourself. God succors the humble.

I do not know where Garrigou-Lagrange found this phrase, but this is so true.

One must become very patient and wait for God. One must willingly be objective and see one's sins in the horror which these are. One must fight temptations to impatience.

Above all, at this stage, one must learn how to suffer, perhaps even constantly.

My comments in blue.

THE EFFECTS OF THE PASSIVE PURIFICATION OF THE SENSES

If we bear these trials well, they produce precious effects in us. It is said that "patience produces roses." Among the effects of the passive purification of the senses, must be numbered a profound and experimental knowledge of God and self.

St. John of the Cross points out: "These aridities and the emptiness of the faculties as to their former abounding, and the difficulty which good works present, bring the soul to a knowledge of its own vileness and misery." (20)This is a repetition from an earlier post, but cannot be said too often. Knowledge of self brings humility. Can anyone really love another person unless one knows who one is?

This knowledge is the effect of nascent infused contemplation, which shows that infused contemplation is in the normal way of sanctity. St. John of the Cross says: "The soul possesses and retains more truly that excellent and necessary virtue of self-knowledge, counting itself for nothing, and having no satisfaction in itself, because it sees that of itself it does and can do nothing. This diminished satisfaction with self, and the affliction it feels because it thinks that it is not serving God, God esteems more highly than all its former delights and all its good works." (21)

With this knowledge of its indigence, its poverty, the soul comprehends better the majesty of God, His infinite goodness toward us, the value also of Christ's merits, of His precious blood, the infinite value of the Mass, and the value of Communion. "God enlightens the soul, making it see not only its own misery and meanness, . . . but also His grandeur and majesty." (22)St. Bernard of Clairvaux notes in his sermons on the Song of Songs that God, the Bridegroom, demands an honesty from the Bride and removes Himself from her if she is caught in falsities. The Bride must decide to be completely honest with herself in order to be loved and to love.

St. Teresa speaks in like manner: "For instance, they read that we must not be troubled when men speak ill of us, that we are to be then more pleased than when they speak well of us, . . . with many other things of the same kind. The disposition to practice this must be, in my opinion, the gift of God, for it seems to me a supernatural good." (23) "People may desire honors or possessions in monasteries as well as outside them (yet the sin is greater as the temptation is less), but such souls, although they may have spent years in prayer, or rather in speculations (for perfect prayer eventually destroys these vices), will never make great progress nor enjoy the real fruit of prayer." (24)One must be completely detached from everything and, also, objective about one's self and others.

St. Catherine of Siena, too, taught the same doctrine: that the knowledge of God and that of our indigence are like the highest and the lowest points of a circle which could grow forever.(25) This infused knowledge of our misery is the source of true humility of heart, of the humility which leads one to desire to be nothing that God may be all,amare nesciri et pro nihilo reputari. Infused knowledge of the infinite goodness of God gives birth in us to a much more lively charity, a more generous and disinterested love of God and of souls in Him, a greater confidence in prayer.

As St. John of the Cross says: "The love of God is practiced, because the soul is no longer attracted by sweetness and consolation, but by God only. . . . In the midst of these aridities and hardships, God communicates to the soul, when it least expects it, spiritual sweetness, most pure love, and spiritual knowledge of the most exalted kind, of greater worth and profit than any of which it had previous experience, though at first the soul may not think so, for the spiritual influence now communicated is most delicate and imperceptible by sense." (26)Again, this section is worth repeating. Does not one love someone not for what that person can give us, but merely, or not merely, who that person is? Do we not desire to be with the Beloved without wanting anything but Him?

The soul travels here in a spiritual light and shade; it rises above the inferior obscurity which comes from matter, error, and sin; it enters the higher obscurity which comes from a light that is too great for our weak eyes. It is the obscurity of the divine life, the light of which is inaccessible to the senses and to natural reason. But between these two obscurities, the lower and the higher, there is a ray of illumination from the Holy Ghost; it is the illuminative life which truly begins. Then are realized the Savior's words: "He that followeth Me walketh not in darkness, but shall have the light of life," (27) and he already has it. The obscurity is not frightening, but like a cave which is safe from all the storms of life. This safe place is like being in the womb of God. Then, in this dimness, one receives a light which penetrates all the darkness. However, one soon realizes that the light and the dark are the same thing. One cannot comprehend the light from God, as this life is too great to understand or even absorb, so for the person receiving this light, this creates a temporary darkness, as when a light is switched on and one's eyes have to take a few seconds to adjust to the light. However, when one gets accustomed to the light, one begins to see more and more Truth, Who is God.

Under this light, affective charity becomes effective and generous. Through the spirit of sacrifice it more and more takes first place in the soul; it establishes peace in us and gives it to others. Such are the principal effects of the passive purification of the senses, which subjects our sensibility to the spirit and spiritualizes that sensibility. Thus this purification appears in the normal way of sanctity. Normal means normal. God wants all people to undergo this process-all. And, as purgatory is punishment, God desires that all enter into this purification now, on earth, where there is merit. Later the passive purification of the spirit will have as its purpose to supernaturalize our spirit, to subject it fully to God in view of perfect divine union, which is the normal prelude to that of eternity.Someone asked me today how long this passive purification takes. I have no idea. I think some nuns in the monastery may experience this in the third to fifth year, before final vows. For others, this happens before they enter, and for others, a long time, perhaps until death. I do not know how long this takes. These are the superior laws of the life of grace, or of its full development, in its relation to the two parts of the soul. The senses should, in the end, be fully subjected to the spirit, and the spirit to God.First, the rational takes over and then the spirit. There is nothing anti-intellectual about this process.

Finally, it should be pointed out that the passive purification of the senses, even for those who enter it, is more or less manifest and also more or less well borne. St. John of the Cross points out this fact when he speaks of those who show less generosity: "The night of aridities is not continuous with them, they are sometimes in it, and sometimes not; they are at one time unable to meditate, and at another able as before. . . . These persons are never wholly weaned from the breasts of meditations and reflections, but only, as I have said, at intervals and at certain seasons." (28)The key at this stage is to recognize that meditation must be given up and not sought. One lives in Faith and in the knowledge that God will reveal Himself as He pleases. In The Living Flame, the mystical doctor, explaining why this is so, says: "Because these souls flee purifying suffering, God does not continue to purify them; they wish to be perfect without allowing themselves to be led by the way of trial which forms the perfect." (29)Perhaps the most important point is found in the above statement. One must accept trial and suffering. The nuns at Tyburn understand this. They accept penances and take on more than "necessary" in order to cooperate with this passive purification. The crosses sent by God do not matter. Suffering does not matter. One must accept this way, if one wants to be united to the Crucified God. If one pulls back, the graces are withheld until one opens one's heart again and again, begging the Bridegroom to return. God chooses the trials, a person does not.

The denial of self-will and the denial of self-love are the two largest necessities in the journey to perfection. All the saints who write on perfection note that these two tendencies, the one to want what one wants instead of deferring to the Will of God, and the second to love one's self more than loving God form the biggest obstacles to holiness.

To be rid of self-will means that one has no preferences in one's life as to events, attachments, things, people, plans. St. Alphonsus got to the point where he could write that he had no preferences at all in his life for anything.

The lacking of preferences includes not having favorite foods, clothes, houses, music, paintings and so on. But, this level of holiness is not merely "hating" things, but appreciating the place these things have in one's life, which is, simply secondary to the will and to the love of God.

Self-love may be much harder to overcome than self-will. Illness destroys self-will, for example, as does poverty, as one can no longer decide places, things and events for one's self. A person who is confined to bed in a prolonged illness finds that giving up one's will is essential to peace.

Self-love has to do with preferring one's self to God. The mystery of self-love is that most people miss what this actually means. Self-love means seeing one's self as the real sinner one is. One comes to see the horribleness of one's sins in the fact of the Purity and Greatness of God. Humility overcomes both self-will and self-love, but many people fight the purification process God allows, even for years and years, missing the point of suffering.

Suffering can be and is frequently wasted. One can be struck down with illness and be angry, instead of resigned, for example. Or one can be thrust into poverty and hate being poor, raging against God.

One can hate the rich, be stuck in the sin of envy, instead of accepting poverty as a mercy, a grace.

Only God can help us through the purgation of self-will and self-love. And, only a tremendous love of God gets one through this stage.

I compare this purgation to a woman getting ready for a marriage. Maybe she is overweight and is determined to look fantastic on her wedding day. She decides to go on a diet, exercise, take care of her body in a new way, as she will soon be in an intimate relationship with the beloved. If one is wealthy enough, a woman may go to spas and get ready for the wedding day in style. We see this process in the Book of Esther.

Esther represents the soul preparing for God in an allegorical interpretation.

Esther 2

Douay-Rheims

2 After this, when the wrath of king Assuerus was appeased, he remembered Vasthi, and what she had done and what she had suffered:

2 And the king's servants and his officers said: Let young women be sought for the king, virgins and beautiful,

3 And let some persons be sent through all the provinces to look for beautiful maidens and virgins: and let them bring them to the city of Susan, and put them into the house of the women under the hand of Egeus the eunuch, who is the overseer and keeper of the king's women: and let them receive women's ornaments, and other things necessary for their use.

4 And whosoever among them all shall please the king's eyes, let her be queen instead of Vasthi. The word pleased the king: and he commanded it should be done as they had suggested.

5 There was a man in the city of Susan, a Jew, named Mardochai, the son of Jair, the son of Semei, the son of Cis, of the race of Jemini,

6 Who had been carried away from Jerusalem at the time that Nabuchodonosor king of Babylon carried away Jechonias king of Juda,

7 And he had brought up his brother's daughter Edissa, who by another name was called Esther: now she had lost both her parents: and was exceeding fair and beautiful. And her father and mother being dead, Mardochai adopted her for his daughter.

8 And when the king's ordinance was noised abroad, and according to his commandment many beautiful virgins were brought to Susan, and were delivered to Egeus the eunuch: Esther also among the rest of the maidens was delivered to him to be kept in the number of the women.

9 And she pleased him, and found favour in his sight. And he commanded the eunuch to hasten the women's ornaments, and to deliver to her her part, and seven of the most beautiful maidens of the king's house, and to adorn and deck out both her and her waiting maids.

10 And she would not tell him her people nor her country. For Mardochai had charged her to say nothing at all of that:

11 And he walked every day before the court of the house, in which the chosen virgins were kept, having a care for Esther's welfare, and desiring to know what would befall her.

12 Now when every virgin's turn came to go in to the king, after all had been done for setting them off to advantage, it was the twelfth month: so that for six months they were anointed with oil of myrrh, and for other six months they used certain perfumes and sweet spices.

13 And when they were going in to the king, whatsoever they asked to adorn themselves they received: and being decked out, as it pleased them, they passed from the chamber of the women to the king's chamber.

14 And she that went in at evening, came out in the morning, and from thence she was conducted to the second house, that was under the hand of Susagaz the eunuch, who had the charge over the king's concubines: neither could she return any more to the king, unless the king desired it, and had ordered her by name to come.

15 And as the time came orderly about, the day was at hand, when Esther, the daughter of Abihail the brother of Mardochai, whom he had adopted for his daughter, was to go in to the king. But she sought not women's ornaments, but whatsoever Egeus the eunuch the keeper of the virgins had a mind, he gave her to adorn her. For she was exceeding fair, and her incredible beauty made her appear agreeable and amiable in the eyes of all.

16 So she was brought to the chamber of king Assuerus the tenth month, which is called Tebeth, in the seventh year of his reign.

17 And the king loved her more than all the women, and she had favour and kindness before him above all the women, and he set the royal crown on her head, and made her queen instead of Vasthi.

One should be working on the spiritual life just as one works on the physical life of the body. Prayer is like dieting and mortification like exercise. Such things hurt, but the end, the goal is a new soul, a soul less burdened by sin and corruption, a soul cleansed of concupiscence.

Such is the time of the Dark Night. One is working hard to prepare for the revelation of the Bridegroom, getting ready to be at "one's best". Only love can provide such a motivation for the suffering of the Dark Night.

Purity and goodness won the heart of the king in the Book of Esther. So, too, the purified soul wins the Heart of God. Is not purgation worth this Love?

Leon Bloy

Guild of Blessed Titus Brandsma

The Church Must Not Be Defensive

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Too many Church leaders do not think, or do not think as Catholics

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GUILD PRAYER

God our Father, source of life and freedom, through Your Holy Spirit you gave the Carmelite, Titus Brandsma the courage to affirm human dignity even in the midst of suffering and degrading persecution.

Grant us that same spirit so that, in refusing all compromise with error we may always and everywhere give coherent witness to Your abiding presence among us.